Crossbow season

For deer, anyway.  Tacitus has been practicing.

He's also pondering ancient Roman ballistae, but I think that would be for something larger like an elk or maybe a moose ...

Random photo

Ten years ago, the trails behind the Roswell (GA) Mill dam.  Wolfgang chased a deer there, more than once.

 He loved going on these walks.  I did, too.

Guest Post: Deer hunting, sophomore season

Friend of the Blog Tacitus wrote about his experiences last year as a newbie deer hunter.  He has some thoughts to share with us on getting ready for his second hunting year, as well as some questions for experienced hunters.

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Deer Hunting – Sophomore Season

Loyal readers out in Borepatch Nation may recall that in November of 2020 I took up deer hunting for the first time. I had a great time and did manage to put venison in the freezer through that mixture of perseverance and luck that often passes for skill.

After that I queried the assembled scholars here about what rifle I should buy, replacing a borrowed 30-06 that I considered a bit too much artillery for the purpose. Finally, after much discussion I used one of my Covid Economy Stimulus checks to go out and buy a Ruger American in 6.5 Creedmoor. Of course this and any possible alternative decision will always generate controversy but too bad. I made the final call based on the recommendation of one of my longest time friends, a gentleman of solid principles and progressive politics who is way more 2nd Amendment than I am. Sadly he passed away last month, so if I don’t get a deer I’m blaming him.

Anyways, I plinked away with target practice on and off, using whatever ammo happened to briefly turn up on store shelves. I’m honestly not all that adept at sighting in the scope, seems like every time I fiddle with the settings I make things worse in some unexpected direction.

But finally I had some time, an improvised sighting in bench, and several types of ammo. With hunting season starting the Saturday before Thanksgiving it is time for decisions.

Here’s my quite realistic deer target with detachable “bullseye” over the ideal location. I had it set at 80 yards, realistic where we hunt.

By this point I had three types of ammo in hand. A Nosler 120 grain, a Nosler 142, and a Hornady American White Tail in 129. Time to decide which I’ll be using.

I’d had good luck with the heavier Nosler last time out, but oddly the lighter ammo including the cheapest of the lot, the Hornady, were looking more promising on this bright fall day.

The higher up hits came before I adjusted the scope, this time actually doing some good. The next 12 shots were in what I consider a humane target zone. The ones marked with L indicate I was moving my aim point slightly to the left. At this point I was disinclined to mess with it further.

When I took the target down and looked at the back I realized that even most of the misses – and this was from both my son and I over several sessions - would in general have taken down the deer cleanly.

At this point there is little more I can do to get ready. I’ve put about 100 rounds down range since buying the rifle and I’m way more comfortable with handling a gun than I was a year ago. The lighter gun and the increased confidence should allow me to get a shot off a second or two earlier, something that would have served me well last year.

Should I try again to zero the rifle? Not unless I run across another stash of 6.5 for sale somewhere. Honestly at this point my accuracy will be more influenced by grip, steady trigger pull, and getting a rest rail kludged onto the front of my tree stand.

Wish me luck, and thanks again for the advice. I learned a lot from it.

Tacitus

What deer rifle for an old hunter?

 Friend of the Blog Tim Wholer is getting into deer hunting now that he is retired.  He has been borrowing a rifle which is obviously less than ideal.  He is looking for advice on what to look for in a deer rifle and I expect that more than a couple of you will have some good advice.  

His post has a picture of the terrain from his tree stand.  It looks wooded, with a fair amount of brush (i.e. no 300 yard shots).

He also has a very interesting question that some of you might have grappled with as well:

It's my hearing that is the problem.

My sons tell me that they generally hear the critters before they see them.  Well, other than the deer that must have nearly crashed into my tree ten minutes before shooting hours started on the Opener (and Lordy that musta been one big, clumsy deer) I pretty much never heard the deer coming.

Now, I do have hearing aides.  These were grudgingly accepted a couple of years back when my Better Half put forth the unanswerable argument that I did not want to miss anything the grand children said.  They are really sophisticated, I can adjust setting from my phone for instance.  But they are also:  A: expensive and B: designed to pick up higher frequency sounds.  Small, delightful child's voices.  Also spousal voices, as it's best not to wait until things are repeated at a volume or in a tone of voice that cannot be missed.

I tried hunting without them, worried that anything lost in the woods would never be found.  I tried hunting with them.  I even tweaked the settings.  There's an outdoor mode.  There are options for volume...crank that up.  And for speech discrimination....crank that down.  But I still can't say I reliably heard the deer. Oh, one or two times I had a dim perception of "something", but that was usually about two seconds before I saw the insolent white tail flashing as the deer ran off.  Really, it's like a stylish middle finger.  

Mostly I heard everything else.  Leaves rustling.  Squirrels and small mice cavorting.  A scratchy noise every time my jacket moved against the tree bark.  And at my age every pivot of my neck beyond about 30 degrees causes a crackling noise that sounds like several large deer rolling around in a pile of dry sticks.

If you have any advice or experiences to share, drop by his blog and leave a comment.

This is why you go to the shooting range

I posted this ten years ago and it still makes me laugh.

This is why you go to the range

This guy is such a terrible shot, he can't even hit the dumbest creature that the Lord ever put on His good earth.



So go practice your marksmanship. Don't be That Guy. Besides, the deer won't wait around for you.

Bananas At Large - Da Turdy Point Buck

There are a lot of deer near Castle Borepatch, and Wolfgang and I like to look for them on our walks. We see them pretty often, and Wolfgang is good at flushing them from their hiding places in the thickets.  He's a big dog, but not the fastest, and the deer don't seem like they have to run fast to get away from him.

Wolfgang really seems to come alive - as the Buddha says, he has the dog nature.

Today we saw a really big one.  Of course, there's a song about that.  Even if it is a pretty weird one, from a group of what seems to be Wisconsin Cheeseheads.



Da Turdy Point Buck (Songwriters: ?)

lemmie tell ya dat
and you know it's not so much the heat as it is the gosh darn humidity
you know dat 

you know when you sit there in the bed and you're just
sweaty you know and you go to reach for the water on
the nightstand and ya slide right out of bed, and the wife says
"stop making so much noise you're waking me up, go to sleep" 

well lemmie tell ya
times like that make me feel like movin up north ya know
good idea
yeah i'd do it too 

course then i couldn't watch the Packers ya know, the Packers are
gosh i like the Packers, i'd do anything for the Packers
who can forget Vince Lombardi ya know, back in the glory years, not me boy
ya know 

yeah well anyhow
gettin to be that time of year eh? 

yeah i'm a deer hunter how do you do 

i got this deer huntin rappin tale for you
i'm so excited, it's my favorite time of year
i love to freeze my buns chasin trophy deer
but don't clap your hands to the stompin of the feet
cause ya he's like me he can't keep a steady beat no 

i got this great big knife cause the hunting is my life
it's my chance to drink beer and get away from the wife
it's the boys night out acting stupidly

say now baby baby don't you think maybe how bout you and me yeah
well we partied all night never made it to our bunks and
i was sittin in the tree stand on the tree dead drunk
windmill blowin 45, temp thirty below,
i was freezin to death, then it started to snow
so i got down from the tree stand start headin for the truck
and thats when i seen it there, the turdy point buck
the turdy point buck? 

turdy point buck
turdy point buck
turdy point buck
turdy point buck
turdy point buck  

well he was eight foot tall,
weighed twelve thousand pounds,
with every step there was a shakin' on the ground
he was so rutiful so beautiful
strutted right out of my dreams,
he was created by God just for outdoor magazines
now i'm not much for thinkin, no i don't do it often
but i had an idea
to put that turdy pointer in his coffin 

turdy point buck
turdy point buck 

i couldn't get to my grenades
the howitzer was in the shop
my stomache was tied into a monkey knot
ya my only hope was betty lou
she was da one
a combination AK-57 uzzie radar lasar triple barrel
double scoped heat-seakin shotgun 

turdy point buck
turdy point buck
turdy point buck 

ya dat the women clappin' the the back dere i gotta make dat
well he was comin for me gettin bigger and bigger but
my fingers were so frozen i could not pull the trigger
i kicked off my boots fired with my big toe
i was Dirty Harry, John Wayne, and G.I. Joe
ya dat turday point buck was only 10 feet away
ya still i couldn't seem to hit him and he wouldn't run away
and after 20 minutes when the smoke cleared
there were hunters on the ground and the world's biggest deer
standing tall and proud, he looked at me and yawned (ohhhhhhh dear)
and then a flash of white, and there he was, gone 

well seven men got up and then one fell down
a big lump of blaze orange, shakin on the ground
at first i thought he was one of the boys
but it was a no brother good in law man from illinois
only cheese-heads in here, right boys?
send him back on the next plane ya know 

Did ya see the turdy pointer?
Did ya see the turdy pointer?
Did ya see the turdy pointer?
Did ya see the turdy pointer?
as we jumped into da truck
sayin i'm gonna get that turdy point buck
yeah i'm gonna get that turdy point buck

turdy point buck

A Deer goes shopping

A clerk at a Ft. Collins convenience store had a rather unusual customer:

So what does a deer like?

Despite store policy prohibiting feeding the deer — and against her betterjudgement — Lori Jones did the only thing she could think of. 

“I got a peanut bar and backed her out and took her down to the lower field.” She added “You can’t let them run all over your store.”

I see you slapping your palm to your face, and yes, a couple days later this showed up:

“There she was in the store and again I started laughing,” Jones said. “And there were her babies in the background.” 

Once again with a peanut bar in hand, she showed Mama and her babies away from the store.

Pretty funny.

So it's hunting season

This says a lot, actually.

Deer are criminals

They are guilty of being filled with yummy meat.  This one has started its criminal career at a young age.

Why yes.  Please come with me into the kitchen ...

Durn varmints!

Beaver steals hunter's gun:

He leaned his Remington .30-06 rifle against the tree, next to the chair he had been sitting in.

“And when I got back, I couldn’t find the gun,” he said.

Nathan said he stood up from his chair and began looking around in the woods. Then things got interesting in a hurry.

Nature had called again … in a different way.

“There was a stream that was running about 100 feet away from me. I look, and there’s a beaver hauling that gun into the water,” he said.

Let’s take a moment to let that sink in.

Let's be careful out there.

Hat tip: Rick, via email.

I'm sorry. I'm getting all choked up.

It's so beautiful.

Found here.  And since it's dove season, here's a musical interlude:

The Second Amendment isn't about duck hunting

And so is it too much to ask that mouth breathing Senators (Idiot - New Jersey) stop saying that it is?

It's not.  You don't even have to read past page 1, Scooter.

Is it too much to ask that sitting US Senators actually have a basic grasp of the law (both Federal and State) before the open their yaps to suggest some "common sense" gun control laws?  We might think that your "common sense" made some actual sense if you had any sort of grasp of current statute.

Helpful pro tip to gun grabbing statist pricks: maybe this is why nobody believes you even when you use the magic words 'common sense".

But ZOMG Sarah Palin is soooooo dumb!!!!11!!!  Or something.

Jules Massenet - "Meditation" from the Opera Thais

Styles change.  Hemlines go up and down, suits sport one or two rows of buttons, cars get fins or hybrid engines.  Music is no different.

The "fins on the fender" of Classical Music could be said to be the 19th Century French composer Jules Massenet, thought to be one of the finest creators of melodies of his age.  His operas were wildly popular in his day, but he was all but forgotten on his death in 1912.  About all he's remembered for these days is this piece, often played at funerals.

It's typically played on the violin, this version on the flute is dandy.



The Midwest has suffered a terrible series of tornadoes that have left a trail of death and destruction in their wake.  Americans are hardy, resilient people, and the rebuilding is likely already being planned.  But so are the funerals.  Life's will to live is strong, but sometimes Nature speaks with a terrible voice of howling wind and crashing debris.  Keep the victims in your thoughts and prayers, that they not suffer Jules Massenet's fate to be remembered only at a funeral.

Et lux perpetua luceat eis, Domine.

Dang, no 12 gauge

Oh, foo.  Leave him a comment on what the best round for that particular game animal is.